Saturday, January 07, 2006

Character



i keep thinking about this last note from one of the lost W Virginia miners.

"Character is what you are in the dark." — Unknown

28 comments:

Anonymous said...

He was thinking of his people, his family.

It is a lot like the people on 9/11 calling the people they loved and telling them goodbye.

We know this man loved his family. And so do they.

ex-democrat said...

yes, terrye, he spent his last moments trying to comfort the living.

ex-democrat said...

markg8 - your disgusting propensity to use others to further your idiotic worldview is not welcome on the thread to any of my posts.

buddy larsen said...

Julian, I'm gratified to see this post--I saw the note reproduced on TV yesterday and was hoping that someone whould do just as you did.

buddy larsen said...

Mark, give it a rest, wouldja? There's plenty of tragedy, there's no need to politicize it. Can't we bury the dead first?

If you have to start somewhere, why not start with OSHA, which permitted the mine? But you won't do that, willya, OSHA being a Big Gov bureaucracy.

Nah, better to blame Bush, who didn't go to WVirginia (Byrd & Rockefeller's state) and personally board up the entrance.

Anonymous said...

mark:

You moron.


Fewer people have died in mining accidents in the last few years than did when Clinton was in office. That is a fact.

In fact in 1995, the number of 76, this year was less than 40. I saw the graph a couple of days ago at realclearpolitics on their commentary or blog. Go find it.

The need to make everything about Bush says a lot about your sorry mental health.

I know coal miners, it is a dangerous business, it always has been.

please go away.

truepeers said...

Some men choose to do dangerous work, for the betterment of their families and nations, and perhaps also for their own characters. Mark will probably never understand this, nor the necessity that some men do it, so obsessed is he with his resentments and victimary paradigms. It would be good to remember that many men aren't so far gone, and they are the ones on whom our comfortable lives daily depend. Let them rest in peace.

Anonymous said...

I personally know people who have spent decades in this business. In fact here in southern Indiana there are people who are second generation miners. A small town not far away calls its basketball team the Miners.

In fact one of the miners I know recently told me that management is obsessed with safety because it effects their ability to get insurance and the rates they have to pay and of course that effects their bottom line.

People like mark do not understand that no one, not management or George Bush or anyone else wants to see this kind of thing happen.

Except maybe for the media, they seem to get a certain perverse kick out of this kind of thing.

Anonymous said...

Not gonna bite, Mark. Not gonna come out for dead miners. Sorry. Guess you get to wear a feather in your cap.

buddy larsen said...

Didn't mean to be anonymous--weird net sometimes.

buddy larsen said...

How 'bout, just, with a personality?

buddy larsen said...

Wilbur Ross

Form your own opinion.

The 'turnaround' biz is tough. But he puts dead operations back up, and employs people who want the work for him.

Lightning struck the Sago mine--it had been fully--if routinely--inspected.

Temporary relief from some of the regulations that likely ruined the original businesses, is something I don't know enough about to comment, re the coal industry.

But I do know that Wilbur Ross has put an awful lot of folks back to work, and CGI's stock has done exceptionaly well--meaning that investors including pension funds, insurance companies that pay off disaster victims, assorted widows & orphans, managed & independent 401ks, and all sorts of plain folks have benefitted from his ventures.

That's the other side of Mark's story. Twelve miners died, twelve thousand (?) others voted with their feet that day and went to work.

And no I'm not minimizing the tragedy. Just trying to not add to it.

Specter said...

Typical Mark.

My mom died of Alzheimer's that she contracted during the Clinton Administration. I guess it was Bill's fault, huh?

Anonymous said...

The truth is coal is up and there is more and more pressure to produce.

I bet mark uses electricity..where does he think it comes from? The Electricity Fairy?

My Dad died in the last months of Jimmy Carter's term.

Need I say more.

buddy larsen said...

Well, it never would've happened to your mom, specter, if only corporate greed fat-catism and republican conspiracy liars warmongers pat robertson no-WMDs gonna-jine-up-de-Weathermen hadn't a not cured Alzheimers.

Anonymous said...

buddy:

Well if they would just take the money away from the 1% that owns everything and do good things with it like find a cure for cancer and Parkinsons and world hunger and give away medicine and food etc...

buddy larsen said...

Actually, that's not a bad idea--first make the Kennedys, Sorosians, and Ketchupians start paying their inheritance taxes, and then earmark ALL of that tax to medical research.

That Katrina van Den Huff n' puffle, editor of "The Nation", our leftest leftist slick, she who advocates as much tax on the rest of us as stalin in his wildest dreams could imagine, actually took a case to the Supreme Court (don't think they agreed to hear it, tho), to keep from paying her inheritance taxes.

It's all in that new best seller "Do As They Say, Not As They Do".

chuck said...

The Electricity Fairy?

I'm now selling shares in the Electric Fairy Corporation &trade. We produce well furnished and attractive little homes for electricity fairies. Just put one on the sun porch, attach the wires of the included Tesla energy broadcaster, and cover it to provide privacy. Fairies are shy, but they can't resist the attractions of a nice home, so soon enough a family will move in and, voila, free power. Good for your budget, good for the environment, and good for fairies.

buddy larsen said...

Or batteries! then ya don't even have to make room for them little fairies! Just have the gummint give out free batteries!

Anonymous said...

Mark:

My father was almost killed in an accident on an oil rig. I was three years old and one of my first memories is of him lying in a hospital bed.

I don't think there is anything funny about any of this, nor have I said that I think there should be no regulations.

The sad thing is everytime something bad happens people like you have to make it about you and your politics and your worldview etc.

Anonymous said...

BTW mark, sometimes bad things happen. Not everything in life can be fixed with government regulations.

Like I said I know miners and most of the ones I know resent the unions and resent the paperwork and constant regs. That is human nature.

Anonymous said...

mark:


You don't know what you are talking about. cut and paste and rant and rave.

For years I have been listening to miners tell me stories about losing people in the mines and it is much better today and safer today than it has ever been. Technology has alot to do with that.

And what about the miners that died when Clinton was president, was that his fault?

You make me sick mark. You could care less about these people. You use these people and their tragedies like cannon fodder for your hatred.

Bush was in no manner shape or form responsible for this, to say he was is a sign of a mental illness.

You jump on this like a vulture on roadkill, it matters to you only in so far as you can use it to make an argumjent. The people themselves mean nothing, absolutely nothing to you.

disgusting little man.

Anonymous said...

peter:

The truth is the number of people killed and injured in jobs like this has declined steadily over the last few years, that includes the years Bush has been in office.

I am not even trying to defend Bush, I am just sick and tired of people like mark using every bad thing that happens for their own benefit.

sheesh.

Anonymous said...

mark:

Most Republicans would just think it was sad.

mark, you are a sick man. Republicans are people, they are human beings.

One of the reasons that Democrats keep getting their asses kicked in election after election is that people such as yourself make it plain that Bush is your enemy not Osama or that poor baby Saddam who got all his pretty oil taken away from him is a victim. It is too weird.

This is a tragedy and the people who lost loved ones should be treated with respect and their privacy should be respected.

They do not exist just to give people like you someone to use.

Specter said...

So Mark,

Let's summarize. A tragedy happened. A gas pocket exploded. People were trapped. Hundreds of people tried to rescue them. The majority of the minors died. Tragic, but easy so far. How many miners have come forward and said it was the government's fault in any way? I haven't seen one. Only Demoncrats like you.

Now we have to deal, rather than in rhetoric like you always do, but with fact. The number of deaths in mining is down and continues to go lower. And, BTW - that trend did not start with Bush, but it has been continued. Nevertheless, mining is a dangerous occupation. Like military, construction, even in some instances working in a post office. Tragedies and accidents happen. It doesn't mean that the government is responsible.

Besides the horrible deaths involved, the real tragedy was the lack of proper communication and then the press putting out information that wasn't true. Now where have I heard that before?

Trying to blame the government for this is ridiculous. It would be like me trying to blame the Democrats for all the deaths caused by alcohol abuse because Roosevelt was the President when Prohibition was repealed.

You might try to grow up a little.

Specter

Anonymous said...

I had a conversation with an underground miner today.

Like I said I know these people. The only thing they are concerned about is why it took so long to get people out.

But they are aware of the dangers and while they don't know all the answers they are not stupid enough to make it about partisan politics either.

I think we will learn more in the days to come about what caused the accident, but whatever it was no one was happy about it.

Except maybe people like you.

Anonymous said...

and by people like you I mean mark, the man who feeds off the misery of others.

Doug said...

Another Big Dem "Expose:"

In an e-mailed response to the Globe, Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman, said: ''There is no way to tell from the records of the court whether he actually participated in the petition for the rehearing en banc.

''The Third Circuit has told us that simply because his name appears on the order, that doesn't mean he participated," Perino said. She referred further questions to Scirica.

Scirica acknowledged that whenever a judge is marked present, as Alito was in the Kopp case, he or she normally participates in the case. A judge's vote is registered only if he decides in favor of a rehearing, Scirica said.

He added that no one had asked for a rehearing in this case.

Thus, the only record of who may have participated in the Kopp case is the listing of judges ''present," Scirica said.

Kopp, in a telephone interview, said he had been stunned that this obscure case had been noted in the papers delivered by Alito to the Senate for the review of Alito's nomination by the administration to be a Supreme Court justice.

Stressing that his sentence had been vacated, Kopp said he had no idea that Alito might have had any involvement in his case.